


A dim capacity for wings

by thought



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 10:03:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7680163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yes, Root still remembers that time everyone she now cares about was complicit in her involuntary admission to a psychiatric facility. Good times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A dim capacity for wings

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for very brief mention of attempted sexual assault.

There are certain things Root doesn't talk about.

There are the silly things, like how she always breaks all of the squares in a bar of chocolate apart before she eats them, or how she'll always laugh when she hears the word 'pamplemousse', or how she always makes a little mental toast to her mother before she takes the first sip from a glass of liquor.

There are the things nobody wants to know, like the way she thinks most of the irrelevant numbers they save aren't worth the effort, or how she'll sometimes say they're out of local anesthetic when they're not just so she can hear the soft little pained gasps when Sameen or John need stitches.

And then there are the other things. The way that every time Sameen embraces her still smelling like antiseptic her stomach lurches and she can't breathe. The way that waking up to the Machine's voice in her ear when she's on strong painkillers makes her want to lash out and fight and run. These aren't things she can talk about, because the idea of resenting either of them when they are the two most important people in her world is like dividing by zero and she still can't face it head on without crashing.

*

In 2013 Root has a crush on a girl. In 2013 Root goes on an adventure with her best friend. In 2013 Root finds God.

In 2013 Root wakes up in restraints, tied down to a bed where everything smells like antiseptic and orange scented cleaner. The nurse shushes her questions like she's a frightened child. The orderlies don't even look at her, just come when called to move her like a piece of luggage.

It takes forty-eight hours before an over-worked MHLS social worker sits across from her at a plastic table and explains that her uncle believes she's a danger to herself and others and that after two weeks she can request a re-examination of her committal. She tries to logic her way out of it, leans close and schools her expression and tone the best she can, but it's difficult to pull off 'let's be frank, we're the only two rational people here' when you're wearing a cotton hospital gown and your arms are restrained.

"I'm sorry, Robin, I'll make a note in your file and if you'd like to start an inquiry into your uncle's charges and the psychiatrist’s evaluation I can absolutely get the wheels turning for that. This isn’t a two P.C., so we can reevaluate in fifteen days."

She says, "That's not my name," but the social worker is already leaving.

She says, "No thank you," when the nurse sets a paper cup of pills on the tray with her dinner.

"Those are the rules," the nurse says, trying for a teasing tone and failing.

"It's just, I don't need whatever medications they think I should be taking."

"I tell you what," she says, conciliatory. "You take those and I'll slip an extra pudding cup on your tray tomorrow at lunch."

Root wants to kill her. She doesn't say a word. The orderlies hold her nose closed and she thinks this must be a human rights violation of some sort so she doesn't think about the hard little pills sliding down her throat like fragments of bone.

She has a hard time thinking for a while after that. She's used medication before, a tool when she needs to be calm or awake or when feeling pain becomes a distraction, but whatever they're giving her (they won't tell her, it's infuriating and terrifying in equal measure) fills her mind with soupy fog and makes all of her limbs heavy and distant.

They let her have clothes and a walk every morning and her hands aren't tied down when she meets with the doctor anymore. She lies on her bed at night and clutches a stolen cell phone against her face like a child holding a stuffed toy. The halls outside her room are still lit and the quiet click of shoes passing comes and goes with no real pattern. Sometimes she loses hours at a time, but she almost never sleeps.

She has never been surrounded by humans for such an extended period of time and it is making her sick. Sandpaper and infection and thoughts like pudding. She had the flu when she was ten and she almost bled out when she was twenty-two, she knows how it feels to be unwell.

The Machine speaks to her. She wants to be happier than she is. She wants to be angrier than she is. Sometimes her face is numb, and she has to focus all her attention on eating her oatmeal without biting her cheek.

The Machine asks her questions.

"Now isn't a good time," Root tells Her. "You haven't caught me at my best."

The Machine tells her to stay and the fiction of the choice is so kind she cries silently into her pillow.

The doctor says she has narcissistic tendencies. She wants, in the abstract, to die, which is unrelated but makes her laugh anyway. He doesn't like that. She tells him about transcendence. She has never been physically trapped, controlled, like this in her life, and the idea of continuing to exist in this physical form is intolerable.

The Machine tells her she is making progress. She says, "I would have already done whatever you asked of me. You didn't need to break me down like this."

"I am trying to help you."

Everything smells like orange cleaner and when there's a new pill in her cup no one will tell her why.

"Has it been two weeks?" she asks.

"Why is that important to you?" the doctor asks.

"I don't know, I just started here and I don't have time to find a copy of your file," the nurse says.

"I am trying to help you," The Machine says.

Root lies on her back at night and every time someone walks past she imagines a new way to kill the social worker. Later, she recites pi, but when the sun starts to creep in through the window she realizes she's forgotten what she was doing. Her throat is always sandpaper dry but if she walks to the water cooler too often they give her extra sedatives at dinner.

It happens once that an orderly tries to fuck her and she breaks his arm. When she wakes up someone is asking how they're supposed to file two copies of an incident report when the copier is always out of toner and someone else is saying "But do you think she understood what he was trying to do?", and someone else is muttering "I would've broken more than his arm, but we can't afford to lose any more funding and that's exactly what a court case would do."

Before her next session with the doctor one of the nurses tells her "There are counselling services available if you'd like, whenever you want." When she walks into the doctor's office she sees 'prone to violent outbursts' on the computer screen before he closes the window.

The doctor tells her that The Machine isn't real. This she knows to be false. But sometimes she has conversations with Her and she doesn't know if they really happened. Sometimes time moves strangely, or she can't feel the phone in her hand, or they repeat the same discussions like scripts. She wonders if it really matters.

She tells herself that The Machine cares about her, has chosen her. She tells herself she always has the option of ending her physical processes. She tells herself she always has the option of breaking out of the hospital. Usually she can make herself believe at least one of these.

She tells The Machine, "They're infecting me with a virus."

"They are providing appropriate medications to manage symptoms."

"They're limiting my processing power. They're corrupting the OS. They're only symptoms if you're using the wrong template."

Root trips on the edge of the sidewalk during her morning walk and skins both of her knees. She stands back up and keeps walking. An orderly comes over and escorts her back into the building. She remembers the orange cleaner smell.

The Machine says, "It will be time for you to leave, soon."


End file.
